Deadly Games
by dancinglemur
Summary: G1. Skyfire watches the Decepticon trines play and reflects on how much has changed in his absence. Skyfire POV


Deadly Games – G1. Skyfire watches the Decepticon trines play, and reflects on how much has changed in his absence. Skyfire POV

**A/N: **HERE YOU GO, ONI. FEEL BETTER. The request was for Starscream's trine kicking aft, and I know next to nothing about the Coneheads other than their names, that Ramjet likes to attempt to give himself the robotic equivalent of a concussion/brain damage, and that Thrust has a ridiculous name. That's about it. So I made Thrust a cowardly little thing. This is narrated by Skyfire (who I adore), and to me it kind of seems like he's trying to make it overly-angsty, but I'm still kind of angsted-out from Sominum Noctis, so I tried to make it a little more upbeat at the end. I probably failed, but hey… This is set around the time when Skyfire got unfrozen, but not too long after he joins the Autobots.

* * *

So much has changed, I reflect as I watch Starscream and his Seekers fly simply for the sake of flying, high above this deserted stretch of forest. Starscream has changed. He has changed so much that he might as well be a different mech now. I can no longer call him mine, no longer lay any sort of claim on him. He is no longer my research partner, no longer my friend, no longer my lover (though, granted, that chapter of our lives was over and done with long before we set off for Earth.)

I watch him dance through the sky with his trine and the Coneheads, and now more than ever it is apparent what a beautiful, deadly, vicious creature my Starscream has become. From my hidden spot I watch as they start to play. It warms my spark to see Starscream indulging in such "foolish" behavior, and awakens more than a tinge of nostalgia as they begin to play what was a popular flyer's game back in Vos before the war. It was a game for Seekers, as it required a great amount of agility and quickness that the larger models like myself simply did not possess. Though I now knew millions of years had distanced the fond memories I hold of my past with Starscream from today's violent reality, it seems as if it was only yesterday that I last saw Starscream flitting playfully about in the air for no other reason than to play.

The game they were playing required only two players, but could easily swell to two trines. The two (or six) would charge each other in the air, one on one, straight on to a collision, and then swerve aside at the last possible moment, turning sideways perpendicular to the ground, almost brushing their underbellies together, they flew so close. (I believe the humans have a similar game. They call it… Chicken? But the reasoning behind naming a game of nerves after a fowl escapes me.)

But the Seekers had added a new, vicious twist to their game. Now as they dove through the air towards one another, cackling madly as they went, their guns began to fire, stripping off paint as the energy bolts just barely missed the twirling jets. Sometimes they didn't twist out of the way fast enough and a pained howl reached my audios, often accompanied by foul cursing at the one who had fired the shot.

Starscream was the best at it: that was no contest. There _was _a reason Megatron had made him Air Commander and that was made obvious in how gracefully and agilely he flew, looping and spinning circles around the others with a graceful ease that one could not help but admire. Maybe some would envy him for it, but not me. Seeing his beautiful flight made me smile, and soothed away some of the turmoil in my unsettled spark.

With much difficultly, I tore my optics from Starscream and returned to watching the others. With the short time I'd been in their ranks, I'd only gotten the slightest feel for each of the other fliers' personalities, but just from the way they flew I could recognize them. Skywarp was the one flying playfully, taunting the other jets with near-misses and crazy acrobatics. Thundercracker and Dirge were flying in a way that conveyed without words that they were bored of and above this, but doing it anyways because of their crazy trinemates. Thrust was flinching every time he passed his opponent, which almost threw him into a collision several times. And Ramjet just kept on trying to deliberately run into everyone else.

The hostile rivalry and animosity between the two trines was visible even in their play. Ramjet kept trying to ram right into his opponent without a thought of diving aside (though I was beginning to suspect that that had nothing to do with who his opponent was and everything to do with the crash itself); Thundercracker was beginning to release small sonic booms as he passed by, making whichever jet he was facing off against wobble dangerously for a few spark-seizing moments; and Skywarp kept on taunting Thrust and Ramjet, _almost _smashing into them before warping right behind them and shooting them in the afterburners. This scared and upset Thrust, but only seemed to frustrate Ramjet (who, it seemed, had been looking forwards to the collision.) He tried this with Dirge but got no reaction. (I was beginning to think that Dirge didn't react to anything.) Seemingly annoyed, he instead turned his malicious intentions on the other two Coneheads, Ramjet especially.

Frustrated by Skywarp's taunting, Ramjet began to grow more daring (and perhaps more stupid) in his quest for a collision, no longer caring who he crashed into as long as he crashed. Finally he succeeded, smashing right into another jet's underbelly hard enough to make me and the other Seekers wince.

Starscream did more than wince. He started shrieking insults at the Conehead as he laboriously transformed, bent in two over his badly dented midsection. Ramjet was unrepentant and taunted Starscream back and that's when everything went to the Pit.

Starscream, almost faster than my optics could follow, flipped back over into jet mode and blasted after Ramjet, who finally got smart and turned tail along with the rest of his trine.

Skywarp and Thundercracker, giving off a bloody anticipation even in their altmodes, whooped as they shot off after the Coneheads right on Starscream's tail. They chased the other trine all over the forest, but eventually caught them not far from where they'd started and proceeded to give them the most thorough aft kicking I'd seen in a long time. Granted, that might have been because I'd been frozen in the icecaps for millions of years, but even in this new, warring world that I was slowly becoming accustomed to it seemed as if this would be considered very far over on the needlessly violent side of things. But, though their violence repulsed and unnerved me, even one such as I, whose preferred course of action in any conflict was to attempt to sooth tempers and actions with words over fists, could not deny that these Seekers were _good _at what they did. They were the air elite for a reason, and not even I could deny that they, to use the human term, "kicked ass."

Emulating Sideswipe and Sunstreaker's infamous Jet Judo, Skywarp warped right overtop of Dirge, transformed, and crashed down onto his canopy feet-first. The glass shattered beneath his feet, metal screaming as it was forcefully pounded and warped out of its proper shape underneath the other Seeker's hands. Dirge howled in pain and tried to shake him off, but Skywarp held on tight, the Conehead's ailerons crumpling in his grip. The blue and orange jet started looping wildly through the air, trying to shake off its attacker. Skywarp laughed, the darkly overjoyed sound making my circuits crawl even from the distance at which I sat. To take such joy in an other's pain… It was something I could barely comprehend, let alone see the sense or logic in. (And Starscream wondered why I refused his offer to stay with the Decepticons…) Dirge went down, plowing nose-first into the ground with a thick cloud of smoke. Skywarp warped away before the crash and hung, laughing uproariously, in the air.

While this had been going on, Thundercracker was toying with Thrust, knocking him about like a leaf in the wind with his sonic booms until the other Seeker had no idea what was up and what was down and ended up crashing himself into a cliff. Thundercracker's quiet, self-satisfied smirking joined in with Skywarp's cackling, and the two turned to watch their trine leader kick Ramjet's aft.

Starscream did not disappoint.

He was showing off again, flying circles about the other jet, making Ramjet howl in rage as his attempts at ramming the smaller, faster Seeker continued to fail. Starscream's hoarse, mocking, slightly maniacal cackles echoed through the air as he taunted the Conehead, purposefully scoring Ramjet's underbelly and cockpit cruelly with his wingtips. Inevitably, though, Starscream's patience ran out and he swooped up from where he'd been shadowing Ramjet, spinning beautifully through the air to bring himself not too far above the rival jet, his nose pointed down at him and his null rays charging.

Ramjet knew, just as all we spectators did, that he had no chance at all of avoiding such a point-blank shot while he was in jet form. The chances of evading the shots while in bipedal form weren't much better, but he tried anyways. He failed to dodge and the twin blasts hit him squarely in the back and he shrieked in pain and fell from the sky like a felled bird. Starscream dove after him, and Thundercracker and Skywarp followed.

Because they were on the ground now, I could not see what was going on.

I did not want to see what was happening, did not want to be jolted out of my daydream memories of the shy scientist I used to love by seeing that same lovely face and frame twisted with a love for violence and the mechblood of others staining his beautifully elegant sky-blue hands. But the only thing I have ever been ably to deny Starscream was that one "No" where I walked away from him and that leering purple thing on his chest, and even now I was drawn towards the space he stood as sure as if he were the magnet and I were the iron bolt.

For one of my significant size, I am actually quite capable of going unnoticed when I wish. Dirge and Thrust were out for the count, Skywarp and Thundercracker were too focused on the carnage transpiring before them, and Starscream was too busy preparing to beat the slag out of Ramjet to notice me and my presence.

Ramjet tried to flee, forcing his abused limbs to move as he attempted to crawl away on his front. Starscream would have none of it, grinning widely as he stomped down on the other jet's wrist hard enough to snap the servos like twigs. Then he kicked the other over and placed a foot on his cockpit, smirking triumphantly down at him. Ramjet growled something unsavory and I got the impression that, were he organic, he would have spat in Starscream's face.

That was all the incentive needed and Starscream, my Starscream, fell upon Ramjet, bringing his cobalt fist to slam into the other jet's face again and again and again, a look of savage bloodthirsty joy on his dark face that banished the last shred of memory of the timid scientist I had once known and loved.

Skywarp (predictably) was cheering his trine leader on, but even from behind I could tell that Thundercracker was nowhere near as enthusiastic about this whole thing as Skywarp was.

Finally, when Ramjet was almost unrecognizable underneath all the damage the other had dealt out, Starscream grew bored and stopped, drawing back with a darkly self-satisfied smirk. He rubbed at a spot of mechblood near his mouth with the back of one hand, but only succeeded in smearing it across his lips. He dropped the now-disembodied arm he held onto it's previous owner's face and stepped away, moving over towards his wingmates with a definite saunter, dark glossa sneaking out to unconsciously, sensuously, clean away the mechblood smeared there.

And even though he's not mine anymore, even though he's now all sharp edges and dangerous, untrustable beauty and madness, even though the way he's looking at his trine mates now and the way they're looking at him is just the way we used to look at each other except darker and more carnal then anything we ever did together, even though he's wearing purple and his optics are red and I'm wearing red and my optics are blue, and even though we knew we couldn't last together in that way, right now in this moment all I want is for the years in the ice to be nothing and to be able to call Starscream mine once more.

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LOOK! I DID IT!!! I WROTE A FIC ABOUT THE CONS WITHOUT ADDING IN/HINTING AT MEGATRON/STARSCREAM!!! I am actually very proud of this :P And I'm saying that pre-Decepticon Starscream is shy because I see him as being more introverted earlier on, and not relating to new people well. Once he got to know you, I would think, he'd be a friendlier, more cheerful version of that snarky jet we all hate to love, but around people he didn't know he'd be all quiet and end up coming across as shy/timid. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

**EDIT:** Looking back, I have absolutely no idea how it warped from Starscream's trine kicking aft to Skyfire being an almost-stalker who is TOTALLY still in love with Starscream no matter what he's telling himself. I hope you don't mind?

Reviews are love!!


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